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In the decade of lobbying leading up to the reform of Canadian copyright law in 2012, copyright lobby groups had one core message: Canada needed to implement and ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties. While many education, consumer, and business groups expressed concern that the digital lock rules in the treaties would harm innovation, the industry was insistent that the treaties represented an essential component of digital copyright reform.

My op-ed for the Hill Times notes that the lobbying campaign was successful as Canada proceeded to implement and ratify the treaties. The legislation is still relatively new, but in a stunning reversal, one of the leading lobby groups now says that the drafters of the WIPO Internet Treaties were just guessing and suggests that they guessed wrong.

The CRTC’s 2015 decision to ban simultaneous substitution from the Super Bowl broadcast starting in February 2017 has generated renewed criticism in recent days as the NFL, Bell, and the U.S. government launch a lobbying blitz against the decision that will take effect with this season’s game. The league, broadcaster and their supporters argue that the inability to block the U.S. feed will mean lost revenue for the Canadian broadcaster and presumably reduced licensing revenue in the future for the NFL as the Canadian rights may be viewed as less valuable.

Despite claims about damage to Canadian broadcasting, the ban on simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl does not eliminate the ability of the Canadian broadcaster to air its own commercials. In fact, the use of simultaneous substitution for the Super Bowl is an outlier when compared to the broadcast of most other major sporting events in Canada. Whether the Stanley Cup finals, the World Series, the Olympics, or the World Cup, Canadians typically have access to both Canadian and U.S. feeds. Canadians often opt for the Canadian version, perhaps because they like the commentators or the Canadian-oriented coverage. No one suggests that Canadian access to the Stanley Cup finals on NBC or the World Series on Fox (Sportsnet uses the international feed and many commented this year that they preferred that version that included Buck Martinez on colour commentary) eradicates rights or eliminates the ability for a Canadian broadcaster to successfully air the same event.

The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments in Google v. Equustek Solutions, a hugely important Internet case with implications for Internet jurisdiction and free speech online. I wrote about the lower court and appellate court decisions and I have a forthcoming piece in the Communications of the ACM on the case. I attended yesterday’s hearing and live tweeted some of the main exchanges between counsel and the court. As my final tweet of the hearing indicated, I have no idea where the court is heading in this case. A storified version of my hearing tweets is posted below.

The government’s MyDemocracy.ca survey/consultation/questionnaire launched yesterday to a steady stream of criticism as the initiative does not follow the typical consultative approach. Rather than asking direct questions about public electoral preferences, there are a series of questions on “values, preferences, and priorities” that are supposedly designed to discern user preferences. The questions focus on representation, parties, and voting rules (there are several questions on electronic voting that ask if there is support even if the systems are less secure).

The initiative is being run by Vox Pop Labs and the site’s privacy policy advises that the Privacy Act and PIPEDA apply. However, dig into the policy and you learn that users that do not provide detailed demographic information – including age, gender, education, household income, profession, language, interest in politics, and postal code – will not have their responses considered as part of the study. The specific provision states:

In the decade of lobbying leading up to the reform of Canadian copyright law in 2012, the music industry had one core message: Canada needed to implement and ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet treaties. While many education, consumer, and business groups expressed concern that the digital lock rules in the treaties would harm innovation, the music industry was insistent that the WIPO Internet treaties represented an essential component of digital copyright reform. The lobbying campaign was successful as Canada proceeded to implement and ratify the treaties. The legislation is still relatively new, but in a stunning reversal, the head of Music Canada now says that the drafters of the WIPO Internet Treaties were just guessing and suggests that they guessed wrong.

The intensity of the lobbying for the WIPO Internet treaties is difficult to overstate. In 2004, Billboard reported that 26 Canadian industry groups were pressuring the government to ratify the treaties. In 2006, Graham Henderson, president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association (later Music Canada), wrote an op-ed in the National Post titled “Protect Artists: Reform Canada’s Copyright Laws” which argued that: